Lennox Tartan

Clan Lennox

The Lennox was a territory before it was a family. The ancient Lennox covered the whole of Dunbartonshire together with parts of Stirlingshire, Perthshire and Renfrewshire, and its mormaers, later styled earls, appear in record in the twelfth century, when Ailín held the earldom. Two rival accounts of the family’s origin circulate — descent from a Saxon baron named Arkyll said to have been granted lands by Malcolm III, and descent from David, Earl of Huntingdon, brother of William the Lion. Both are disputed and neither should be presented as settled.

Malcolm, 5th Earl, besieged Carlisle for the Bruce party in 1296. The earldom passed by marriage to Walter de Fasselane in 1373, and in 1425 the Earl of Lennox was beheaded, at about eighty, in the proceedings against the house of Albany. John Stewart, Lord Darnley, assumed the earldom in 1488; Matthew Stewart, 2nd Earl, was killed at Flodden in 1513; and Esmé Stewart was created Duke of Lennox in 1581. Recognition as Chief of the Name and Arms of Lennox was issued to John L. K. Lennox in 1833. That line left no male heir and the chiefship lay dormant until a Lyon Court patent of 28 June 1984 in favour of Denis P. H. Lennox. The present chief is Edward Lennox of that Ilk and Woodhead. Sources describe the 1984 instrument inconsistently — as a grant of arms and crest, and as a restoration of the chiefship — and we have not been able to examine the Lyon Court record itself.

The Lennox tartan

The Scottish Register of Tartans lists Lennox in its Clan/Family category. The sett was published by D. W. Stewart in Old and Rare Scottish Tartans in 1893, where he described it as reproduced from a sixteenth-century portrait of a Countess of Lennox which is now lost. It is a single sett of 208 threads. Separately registered is Lennox Dress, a different and smaller sett of 104 threads, which the register places in its District category, along with a further dress variant recorded as fashion in 1986.

A note on honesty: Lennox Modern, Ancient, Weathered, Muted and Red are colourways of the one 1893 sett, not separate tartans, and the turquoise and purple dress versions are likewise colourways of the Lennox Dress sett. The documented date for the family tartan is 1893. Stewart’s sixteenth-century portrait was his own attribution to a source that no longer exists and cannot be checked, so any Lennox tartan older than the commercial era is tradition rather than record. The claim, widely repeated, that Lennox Modern is the oldest tartan still in production is not supported by any record we have been able to find.

Clan facts

References

1. Tartans beginning with L — The Scottish Register of Tartans
2. Tartan & Symbols — Clan Lennox
3. Clan Lennox — Wikipedia
4. Lennox Tartan — Kinloch Anderson